War could last months, officers say

Published: March 26, 2003 7:00PM

WASHINGTON, D.C. Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday.

The combination of wretched weather, long and insecure supply lines, and an enemy that has refused to be supine in the face of American military might has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of U.S. military expectations and timelines. Some of them see even the potential threat of a drawn-out fight that sucks in more and more U.S. forces. Both on the battlefield in Iraq and in Pentagon conference rooms, military about a longer, harder war than had been expected just a week ago, the officials said.

"Tell me how this ends," one senior officer said yesterday.

While some top planners favor continuing to press north, many Army commanders believe that the pause in Army ground operations that began yesterday is critical. A relatively small force is stretched thin over 300 miles, and much of the Army's killing power, in more than 100 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, has been grounded by persistently foul weather or by battle damage from an unsuccessful pre-dawn raid on Monday. To the east, the Marine Corps advance on the city of Kut was also hampered by skirmishing along its supply line and fuel shortages at the front.

More forces are coming, including the Army's 4th Infantry Division, which has begun pushing equipment from 35 ships into Kuwait after Turkey refused to allow U.S. forces to use its bases for a second front, into northern Iraq. But it will probably take the better part of a month for that tank-heavy division to get into position and provide combat power. Other forces heading to this region, including the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, Colo., and the 1st Cavalry Division, from Fort Hood, Tex., will require months to move their tanks and other armor from their bases into combat, the defense officials said.

Pentagon spokesmen rejected that pessimistic assessment yesterday and insisted that the war is still going according to plan. "The plan has moved almost exactly with expectations," Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said at the briefing. "Fast where we expected it to be fast, gathering strength where we expected to do that. So the answer is, it's right on the mark."

But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who maintains close ties to some senior Army generals, seemed to break with part of that assessment, saying in an interview with National Public Radio yesterday that it was becoming evident that the war "may take a little bit longer, don't know how long." He added: "The point is we have had a good battle plan, and it's a battle plan that will succeed."